Our first inter-China travel

Our first domestic trip within China was to see the famous Giant pandas. Our friends Tom and Donna were interested in seeing the pandas as much as we were, so we planned a trip to see them when Tom & Donna’s college-age kids were here from the US at the end of January. (Interestingly, both my Chinese tutors were genuinely surprised when I told them that China is the only native place in the world for pandas…other than China the only place they live is in the zoo!)
We hired a well-known travel agency that has a package trip to Chengdu for a long weekend and off we went. We flew from Shanghai to Chengdu, about 3 hours westward. We arrived in Chengdu and went for a traditional Sichuan-style lunch. Sichuan is very spicy, so we had to ask for some less spicy food for Livi and Gigi, but truth be told, we all focused on the less spicy dishes! We’re wimps.
There were 8 of us in total (Joe had an unexpected trip to the US). We piled into the bus (not a mini-van, an actual tour bus, but not the motor-coach kind, more like an 80s-era bus bus.) Off we went to the Chengdu Panda Research Center. As we drove the snow began to fall. It is typically cold in Chengdu in the winter, but it very rarely snows. So we trooped through the research center in the snow, which was actually very peaceful and beautiful. It turned out to be a lot like a zoo, except it was all Giant pandas. And they were so close up, it was amazing. Not like our zoos in the US where everything is far away and behind bars and glass and more glass. They were literally 10-15 feet in front of us munching on bamboo. I think it’s one of the first things we’ve done here in China that really and truly captured Gigi and Livi’s attention, they loved the pandas! And even though pandas are wild animals, there is something about them that is so adorable that you are just delighted to be standing there watching them for as long as the guide will let you. They are the friendliest looking bears!
The next day, Saturday, we hopped on the bus for a 4 hour trip to Woolong Nature Reserve, which is the biggest panda research, breeding and rehabilitation center in China. And it’s up in the mountains. These are all things we knew before we left. What we did not know was that it would be snowing. And that the road up into the mountains is 2 lanes, barely, with very few guardrails, and a sheer 100-300 foot drop off of one side. And that it’s totally normal, commonplace even, for one bus to pass another bus, around a corner, in slippery conditions.
To say that we were all wondering about the wisdom of taking this trip would be an understatement. Everyone had a different reaction to the drama unfolding on the road in front of us. Nick (age 20) stuck his head in a book, Tracie (age 19) moved up to the front of the bus in order to be the one witness who saw the tragic accident unfold, and Livi and Gigi and Cari (age 12) watched a movie on a portable DVD player. Tom, Donna and I were alternately awed by the scenery and the shacks and terraces where people were carving out an existence, and appalled by the driving moves we saw on the road. More than a few “oh shits” came out of our mouths as cars, vans, and busses skimmed by each other.
We were GREATLY relieved to arrive in Woolong at the hotel. And then we stepped out of the bus into the -4 degree weather (that’s about 24 degrees F). We knew ahead of time that the hotel does not heat the entire place in the winter (considered a waste of energy when there are not very many visitors), and we also knew that they would provide space heaters and electric blankets for our individual hotel rooms. Knowing that is different than stepping into the lobby of the hotel and realizing it might actually be colder than outside! The hotel was the only one in the village, and the restaurant attached to the hotel was also the only one in the village.
We went over to the restaurant for our lunch and had the disturbing discovery that the restaurant was not heated either. It’s a bad sign when the fountain and pond INSIDE a restaurant are covered in ice. We sat around our table, bundled in ski jackets, hats, gloves, and scarves, with hand warmers in our pockets. And let me tell you, it is not possible to eat with chopsticks while wearing gloves. Nor is it possible to get the food off the lazy susan, onto your own plate and into your mouth before it gets cold when it’s -4 degrees. We all ate very quickly and reported back to our guide, ready to go to the Panda Center. We were excited about this panda center because part of the tour was getting to do an hour of volunteer work with the pandas. We had no idea what we’d be doing, but it is such a rare opportunity to interact with these animals that we were game for whatever.
We get to the Panda center and check-in. I don’t know much Chinese, especially in Sichuan province, but even I know what “tai da le” means, especially when accompanied by giggles behind the hand. It means “too big”, and they were referring to our friend Tom, who is 6’5”. For volunteer work we were required to wear mechanic-like overalls, and as you can imagine, they did not have one single pair of overalls that would fit him. But they decided he couldn’t go on without it, so they literally shoved him into the overalls. The poor guy! The pants legs only came down about 4 inches below his knees, and he had to hunch over because the overalls were about 6 inches too short between his shoulders and his crotch. We were in tears laughing as this well-known Chinese panda researcher shoved Tom into these overalls.
Decked out in our overalls we went out into the research center. This center also looked like a little like a zoo, but many of the enclosures are built directly into the side of the mountain and are huge, so they retain the natural habitat the pandas would be used to. They split us up into pairs and sent us off in different directions with a researcher.

Cari (Tom & Donna’s 12 year old niece) and I hit the jackpot. We went with the researcher who was supervising the monthly weigh-in of the mama pandas. The cool thing about this is that they have to take the panda cubs out of their enclosure to get the mama bear to come to the scale. We were literally a foot away from 3 month old panda cubs. We were not allowed to touch, but still, to be that close and hear their noises and see how playful they are was just amazing. Our poor friends Tom, Donna, Nick and Tracie got the raw end of the deal. They cleaned panda poop out of enclosures…sometimes having to crawl on their hands and knees through blackberry bushes to get to the area where the pandas like to do their business. This was the second time on the trip where people seriously wondered why we paid for this experience, but the best was yet to come…
Sunday morning dawns as cold as ever, and snowing again. We eat a very quick and cold breakfast, only to discover that the bus won’t start. They are going to try a few different things to get it started, so we all congregate in one hotel room, combining all of our spaceheaters. Even with all our space heaters in one room, we sat around playing cards with our coats on. 2 hours later our guide comes in to report that she called the local mechanic, but he’s already left on holiday for Chinese New Year. So her next plan is that we ride the public bus that comes by. We are all game because we really do not want to spend another day in this freezing cold hotel. Then our guide says to us, “I’m just afraid that you might not like the public bus. You see, the people are local Tibetan people and they are very poor, and they smell like butter and Yak.” OK, see if you can keep a straight face when someone tells you you are getting on a bus with a bunch of people who smell like butter and Yak!!! Not possible.
At noon, when the public bus is scheduled to come, we all troop out to the road to wait. At 12:15 our guide delivers the bad news that the bus isn’t coming today. Apparently the driver is also on holiday and the Sunday route just isn’t running. Huh. So we go back to the room and huddle around the heaters while she continues making phone calls. An hour later, she summons us outside to the two mini-vans she has found. These are not your typical mini-vans, they are easily 15-20 years old, and they are very skinny, definitely only two people per bench seat. And one of the mini-vans has a huge puddle of oil leaking under it. We all pile into the two vans and the driver shuts the sliding door. And then he shuts it again, and again and again. The door will not latch closed. After about 12 tries he just leaves it and climbs in the driver seat. Our guide sits next to the door and holds it closed and off we go. To say that we went careening down a mountain would be totally and completely accurate. Tracie devised a song in her head titled “Arrive Alive”. Sheer terror led to laughter as our mini-van darted in and out and around other cars and buses. Despite a traffic jam in a tunnel (which, eerily, was only partially complete), we made it down the mountain to another bus that the company had sent for us. Eventually we made it back to the Chengdu airport at 5:30, the culmination of a day that had begun at 7am. We gratefully went into the airport’s KFC restaurant and ordered chicken sandwiches. (Did I mention that we had been living on granola bars and peanuts since breakfast because the restaurant wasn’t set up to feed us lunch?) Just as we thought things were back under control, the orange drinks that we ordered with our sandwiches were delivered to the table, PIPING HOT. ????? Ah, as we like to say here when there is nothing left to say…TIC (This is China).